Partial View of Gowanda Correctional Facility with Power Plant in Background at Left, September 1996
Efforts to restrict inmates’ access to books in New York State prisons reveal a troubling disregard for inmates’ right to read and appear to have no reasonable basis, PEN America announced on Monday.
In New York State, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision Directive 4911A, put in place December 4, 2017, restricts prisoners’ ability to receive packages and articles: packages must be sent from a list of approved vendors, or face possible rejection. As of January 8, only six vendors are approved to send books. As a result, Directive 4911A prevents inmates from being sent books—including used books or books unavailable through purchase in any catalog—outside of these vendors’ limited lists.
Currently, the Directive is a pilot program, and applies only to three correctional facilities: Greene, Green Haven, and Taconic, with the possibility that the Directive will later be applied to all state facilities.
While this Directive does not restrict access to prison library facilities, NYC Books Through Bars has noted in a January 3 letter to Governor Cuomo that they have received requests for books from prison employees who are “struggling to stock libraries for the general population.”
“The State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision needs to promote moral and responsible prison policies that uphold inmates’ access to information and safeguard the right to read,” said Summer Lopez, PEN America Senior Director of Free Expression Programs. “Directive 4911A, a ruinously over-broad restriction on inmates’ ability to access published materials, goes in the opposite direction. We encourage the Department and the Governor’s office to revoke this ill-considered directive, and to ensure inmates have access to as much outside publications as possible.”
PEN’S ANNUAL PRISON WRITING CONTEST
PEN America Center’s annual writing contest is open to anyone incarcerated in a federal, state or county prison in the year prior to September 1, the annual deadline for poetry, fiction, drama and nonfiction. No submission fees. Cash award for first, second and third place. Details HERE.
Link HERE to read the winning manuscripts from the 2017 contest.
PEN America has run a national prison writing program for over forty years, including the above referrenced contest.
“Founded in 1971, the PEN Prison Writing Program believes in the restorative, rehabilitative power of writing and provides hundreds of inmates across the country with skilled writing teachers and audiences for their work. It provides a place for inmates to express themselves freely and encourages the use of the written word as a legitimate form of power.”
Prisons Foundation, a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit, “seeks a more creative and fulfilling world for both incarcerated and free citizens.”
Manuscript Submission Guidelines All books by prisoners and returning citizens and those who write about them and books by all citizens who donate are welcome for publication.Click Here for further information and submission guidelines for inmates.
Photo credit: Gawanda photograph courtesy of Daniellagreen under CC BY-SA 3.0 license; NY Correctional State Services logo is public domain.
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. PEN champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Its mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.
The Artists at Risk Connection launches today in tandem with a public event in New York featuring one of the world’s most prominent threatened artists, Ai Weiwei. Ai, who will be in conversation with author and PEN America President Andrew Solomon, was detained in China without charge for 81 days during 2011 and later denied his passport to travel. The event will be streamed live online at 6pm (Eastern) at PEN.org Livestream.
“Fats was starting to think that if you flipped every bit of received wisdom on its head you would have the truth. He wanted to journey through dark labyrinths and wrestle with the strangeness that lurked within; he wanted to crack open piety and expose hypocrisy; he wanted to break taboos and squeeze wisdom from their bloody hearts; he wanted to achieve a state of amoral grace, and be baptised backwards into ignorance and simplicity.” ― J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy
PEN America announced today the launch of the Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), an online collaboration of more than 500 global organizations that provide life-saving resources to artists worldwide who face oppression, persecution, arrest, and violence for their creative work.
Recent reported threats against New York’s Guggenheim Museum, the cancellation of a major planned work from the Louvre in Paris, and the withdrawal of a major film from Russian theatres offer stark reminders of the hotly contested terrain that artists occupy. There were more than a thousand attacks on artists in 2016, according to the Copenhagen-based Freemuse—more than double the prior year. While hundreds of organizations offer assistance to imperiled artists, ARC is a first-of-its-kind platform bringing all of these resources together in a single online hub, accessible in 104 languages.
“Artist face backlash when they push up against intellectual, social, and ideological boundaries,” said Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director of PEN America. “While global campaigns and U.N. resolutions have been mounted to protect journalists and human rights defenders, threats to artists have gotten limited international attention. The Artist at Risk Connection brings together an extraordinary network of global organizations committed to augmenting the assistance available to artists who risk their freedom and their lives in the name of creative expression.”
ARC collates resources—including emergency funding, housing opportunities, residencies, fellowships and grants, and legal, immigration, and resettlement services—in an interactive online catalogue to help threatened artists quickly identify programs for which they’re eligible. This exhaustive database is the first of its kind for artists-at-risk, who have typically had to piece together assistance through a combination of personal contacts, referrals, and web searches, often under dire circumstances.
ARC also provides training and facilitates collaboration within a network of artist assistance organizations, including Index on Censorship (United Kingdom), ICORN (Norway), Al Mawred (Lebanon), and the Sundance Institute (United States), to strengthen each organization’s ability to provide comprehensive support to artists in dire need. Over time, ARC will work to elevate the visibility of artists at risk, seeking to mobilize an even greater breadth global arts institutions to play a more prominent role in assisting their field’s most vulnerable.
“At-risk artists often operate in the shadows, striving to continue to work amid pressures and dangers to their livelihoods and safety,” said Julie Trébault, Director of the Artist at Risk Connection. “Given the central role of the arts in society and culture, those who pay the heaviest price for their contributions need and deserve greater support and recognition for their sacrifices.”
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PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.
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The Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) safeguards the right to artistic freedom of expression and ensures that artists everywhere can live and work without fear. An interactive hub to gather, share, and coordinate the many resources, services, and forms of assistance available to artists at risk, ARC aims to strengthen connections between threatened artists and the organizations that support them.
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“PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide.”
“Join more than 150 writers and artists from 40 countries as PEN World Voices takes on today’s restive relationship between Gender and Power in the age of Trump. In this moment of unprecedented threats to freedom and truth and of emboldened mobilization and resistance the Festival will use the lens of literature to examine bigotry, misogyny, and xenophobia. Celebrate the transcendent power of art to enable people to see beyond their differences with conversations, readings, and workshops taking place throughout New York City.”
PEN America has announced that leading Russian and American journalist and author Masha Gessen, will deliver the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture, followed by a conversation with comedian and political commentator Samantha Bee on the closing night of the PEN World Voices Festival (May 7, 5 pm, Cooper Union Office of Continuing Education and Public Programs, NYC. Tickets/Details HERE).
My apologies for the late alert on this. I just found out about it. However, there are three more days left on the schedule for PEN World Voices Festival. For a complete schedule of events, visit: penworldvoices.org (Programming and participants subject to change.) J.D.
MARSHA GESEEN TO DELIVER ARTHUR MILLER LECTURE
May 7, 5 pm, Cooper Union Office of Continuing Education and Public Programs, NYC
by
Angelo Piro, the Digital Communications Assistant at PEN America.
This year the thirteenth annual Festival, taking place in New York from May 1-7, will address some of the vital issues of the Trump era, with a special focus on the fractious relationship between gender and power. At a moment of historic threats to freedom and truth, Ms. Gessen and Ms. Bee, both activists in their own rights, will speak to Gessen’s experience with Russian censorship and suppression of dissent, and parallels between the current administration and other authoritarian regimes.
Named for playwright Arthur Miller, an ardent advocate for free expression and longtime leader of PEN, the annual lecture is a hallmark of the Festival. In past years, the Freedom to Write Lecture has been delivered by Umberto Eco, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, Wole Soyinka, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The event will take place at The Great Hall at Cooper Union on Sunday, May 7 at 5pm. Tickets for this and all Festival events are available at worldvoicesfestival.org
Masha Gessen (b. 1967): Russian-American journalist, author, translator and activist, outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump
Masha Gessen is the author of ten books of nonfiction, most recently The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, coming from Riverhead in October. [The book is available for preorder.] Ms. Gessen is a contributing opinion writer to The New York Times and a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, among other publications.
Samantha Bee (b. 1969) is a Canadian-American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actress, media critic, and television host
Samantha Bee has quickly established herself as having one of the most unique and sharp comedic voices on television. Bee departed The Daily Show in 2015 and currently holds the title for being the longest-serving regular Daily Show correspondent of all time. In 2016, Bee received global and critical recognition from the success of her very own award-winning weekly late night comedy series, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.
These are just a few of the other 150+ writers and poets presenting at this year’s Festival. If you are reading this post by way of an email subscription, it’s likely you’ll have to link through to the site to view the slide show.
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About PEN America
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.
About the PEN World Voices Festival
Founded in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, by Salman Rushdie, Esther Allen, and Michael Roberts with the aim of broadening channels of dialogue between the U.S. and the world, PEN World Voices is the only international literary festival in America, and the only one in the world with a human rights focus. The Festival attracts the best-known writers from across the globe and has garnered international acclaim as a premier literary event. Since its founding 13 years ago, PEN World Voices has presented more than 1,500 writers and artists from 118 countries speaking 56 languages.
The Village Voice serves as official media sponsor of the 2017 PEN World Voices Festival.
The Festival is made possible in part through the generosity of Kaplen Brothers Fund, Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Embrey Family Foundation, Amazon Crossing, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Thanks to PEN America and Angelo Piro for this piece, to Isabelle Deconinck for the slide show photographs and to reader Maureen D and to Tatyana at http://www.arts-ny.com for the heads-up; photo credits, Masha Geeson courtesy of Bengt Oberger under CC BY-SA 4.0 license and Samantha Bee courtesy of Justin Hoch under CC BY-SA 2.0. Slide show photographs are under author or photographer copyright.
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The PEN Center USA Literary Awards, Calls for Submissions:”… is accepting teleplays by writers living west of the Mississippi River. Entries are reviewed and judged by panels of distinguished writers, critics, and editors. Winners will be announced in the late summer of 2017. Each winner receives a $1,000 cash prize, a one-year membership to PEN Center USA, and two tickets to the Literary Awards Festival in the fall of 2017.” Further Details HERE.
The University of Arkansas Press has deadlines coming up on three contests:
$5,000 Miller Poetry Prize deadline is September 30, 2017. The judge is Billy Collins and the entry fee is $28. This is for collections. Further details HERE.
2018 $1,000 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize for a second book of poetry in English by a writer of Arab heritage. “Since its founding in 1996 the Radius of Arab American Writers has celebrated and fostered the writings and writers that make up the vibrant and diverse Arab American community; and the University of Arkansas Press has long been committed to publishing diverse kinds of poetry by a diversity of poets. The series editors are Hayan Charara and Fady Joudah, and the prize is named in honor of the world-renowned poet, novelist, essayist, and artist Etel Adnan.” $25 entry fee. Hayan Charara and Fady Joudah are judges and the series’ editors.Further detail HERE. April 15, 2017 is the dealine to be considered for the 2018 prize.
2018 $1,000 CantoMundo Poetry Prize for “a book of poetry by a Latina/o writer. Since its founding in 2009, CantoMundo has cultivated and supported a community of Latina/o poets and the poetry they create, and the University of Arkansas Press has long been committed to publishing diverse kinds of poetry by a diversity of poets.” Deborah Paredez and Celeste Gúzman Mendoza are the judges and the series’ editors. $28 entry free. Further detail HERE. April 15, 2017 is the deadline to be considered for the 2018 prize.
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In New York State, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision Directive 4911A, put in place December 4, 2017, restricts prisoners’ ability to receive packages and articles: packages must be sent from a list of approved vendors, or face possible rejection. As of January 8, only six vendors are approved to send books. As a result, Directive 4911A prevents inmates from being sent books—including used books or books unavailable through purchase in any catalog—outside of these vendors’ limited lists.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 